


Resistance

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Avalanche, Gen, Pain, Shinra being Shinra, Some politics, authoritarianism, dark humour, mention of Aeris, mention of the Turks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:26:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: "How do you fight Shinra?"Set pre-OG. Shinra doing Shinra things; AVALANCHE doing AVALANCHE things. Explores Jessie's involvement.
Relationships: Jessie & AVALANCHE
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	Resistance

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first draft of this sometime in early July, originally as two different pieces, but I think they combine well. I've since added a few bits. I have a pile of angry politicsfic I'm finally looking at again, much of it rather unsubtle. :P
> 
> Maybe this would've been better as a longer piece, but I didn't have the patience for that, so hey.

How do you fight Shinra?

How do you fight Shinra when they control every TV station, every radio show? When the only paper that will even consider telling your story has been mocked for decades as a lie-ridden rag? When websites remove your words as you type? If you start your own press, nobody will have heard of it, and even if it gets big, it's easy to smear.

And besides, if it gets big, Shinra will get curious about who founded it, and track you down.

And you know, only you know, that Shinra murder the people they track down. They have men, men in blue suits, men nobody believes in, because it sounds crazy, even to you, but there was a friend of a friend of a friend and you _know_. You feel it in your bones.

How do you fight, when everyone at work is perfectly friendly until the subject comes up, and suddenly, a switch flicks, and they're automatons, "Shinra Benefits Us All"-- and the scariest thing is, they're not playing along, because Shinra has rewritten the history books. Your colleagues think of the past-- the past with ivy trailing up the walls and light and clean water -- and they shudder.

How do you fight, when you go for drinks with those colleagues and everyone's laughing over a pint about that Wutai-spy academic who's just been kicked out and you want to say something because you're fairly sure she's not a spy but she may have been murdered and all you can manage is a feeble 'I liked her' and two men thump the table in outrage and half the group look at you with suspicion and edge away and one gives you a tight smile and says "interesting" while pulling out his phone and now you're probably on a list and meanwhile you've noticed that nobody gave a damn about her uncle's heritage until she started saying that the Nibelheim-burning was real.

How do you fight when the only people with you are those who have nothing to lose? When you see that people who raise their heads get trampled, and you wonder about all the ones you _don't_ see? When you realise it's about the pattern, and Shinra don't much care if they kick you out or if you walk out; the point is to get you out and install someone who won't ask questions.

*

Jessie's a bit surprised to end up in the resistance.

That's what's happened, she's 'ended up'. She's never been much of a fighter-- well, she wanted to be a martial artist when she was 7, and she had some vague dreams of joining the Turks, but then she came last in every school race and eventually had to accept that the only physical fights she would ever win were those where she had a pixellated avatar. She'd never expected to be on the front lines like this.

But there's nobody _else_.

That's what gets her. Until last year, she was cheerfully, _blissfully_ ignorant of what Shinra was doing. Then she learned, and it was an instant 'I can't support this. I have to stop this'. And she doesn't understand how other people saw the same things-- they must have seen them, they _must_ \-- yet didn't have the same reaction.

But they didn't, so here she is. A member of The Resistance.

Over the past few months, her eyes have been opened. AVALANCHE (the smallest group), _Daughters of_ _Gaia_ , _Corel for Peace_ , _Witches of East Junon_ , _WutaiLib_... organisations with webpages that look at least 30 years old, energetic, rough around the edges, some she's heard of, some that are new. Talking with radios and walkie-talkies because Shinra keeps censoring them. They have floppy disks hidden in lockboxes all over the world, so that when Shinra torches all the records, they can bring them back again. Everything is copied six times. The senior operatives have seen it all before.

"This is nothing. Just wait 'til they _really_ get going."

It's scary, and exciting, and she keeps looking over her shoulder, in case there's a SOLDIER watching-- and more than anything, she can't believe that _she_ is involved. She's a wimp! But she sits in a bar in sector 2 after closing time, talking to other people who are really just regular people, not zealots-- just people who've lost something. Some have lost children and families, and those people are more like figures than people at this point, figures Jessie both respects and fears. Their stories are legends, and when they speak, she can see the pain echoing behind their eyes, into infinity; they mean it. She admires their work; they know the fight better than anyone, but she's not in their group; too young, too happy; they all feel the invisible line.

Her crowd are the people who've suffered losses more like her own: people who've lost friends after challenging Shinra's dogma; people who then woke up one morning to find a message telling them not to come into work, with a promise of severance pay that never materialised, with every backup option mysteriously refusing their calls.

So they sit in a bar and they laugh and joke together, because it's the only space where you can mock Shinra like this without being reported. They have a custom chat server with an emoji of President Shinra's face, edited with cat-ears since there's a running joke about him being a furry (another cell snuck out some peculiar materials from the Urban Development department, and now they all have more questions than answers). They have a website, shinrasucksballs.com, where they post memes. They write long articles about what the Shinra Science Department's _really_ up to behind the scenes, and post them on invite-only blogs. The tricky bit is working out how to get their word out to the general public, without alerting their enemies. For trusted allies, they can rely on their network, using phonetrees, and passing stuff person-to-person. (They feel like they should use secret codes, but nobody can be bothered. Shinra seem more focused on the _Wutailib_ guys, anyway. Jessie isn't even allowed to know their contact address.)

Reaching _potential_ allies is harder. Any publication that prints their words will be finished. And if they start their own, nobody will the run the adverts, even if AVALANCHE could afford the fees (they _so_ can't).

So they have to get creative. _Witches of East Junon_ make booklets, monochrome, pages different sizes, cream recycled card, done on a home-printer. Jessie wonders if that's wise; the printer might be traceable, if someone analyses the ink. AVALANCHE get things printed in bulk, at wallmarket, wearing disguises. The shop prints so much, Shinra can't do anything if they trace it back (they hope). Jessie's group make magazines, designed to look like gardening magazines at a glance; planting flowers is the best way to say 'fuck you' to Shinra. They've all noticed that girl, the one in sector 5, whose house is full of flowers. They get the impression she's sending a signal, hoping to be recruited, but they studiously ignore her; the others say she's asking for trouble, if she isn't an, ahem, plant. At the very least, it looks like Shinra has been told to leave her alone for some reason. So AVALANCHE keep their distance, though they still buy the flowers on days they cross paths. Can't arrest a person for buying flowers.

(Yet.)

AVALANCHE receive their own magazine subscriptions in opaque envelopes, addressed to people who don't exist. They use the fake names for two reasons: in case their allies' infrastructure is hacked, and their names are displayed for all to see, and in case their building is flagged as an AVALANCHE hideout and someone from Shinra goes through their trash. Some of them still have families.

Still, mistakes happen. A newbie at _Corel for Peace_ is tricked, thinks _TakeBackWutai_ is a legit organisation, invites a member to the CFP groupchat. _Corel for Peace_ don't even do voice-vetting, let alone video interviews. By the end of the day, every member is on a Shinra database, as Jessie discovers 3 nights later when she happens to hack _into_ that database.

AVALANCHE want to let the CFP guys know they've been compromised, but then _that_ will leak, and Shinra will know they have a security breach (if this whole thing wasn't a honeypot setup in the first place, _shit_ ). Everyone's pissed off about it, fighting in every direction about the ethics of choosing between the CFP guys and the whole movement; one woman leaves. But in the end, Shinra solves it for them, by bungling things, accidentally releasing the same files that AVALANCHE already hacked onto the public web. Jessie's too relieved to be mad that her effort was wasted.

Back to getting the word out. They put stickers in bathrooms. They write on lampposts. They spraypaint. (The _Daughters of_ _Gaia_ tell them off for that one, say they should spare a thought for the poor cleaning woman who'll have to spend her day scrubbing their graffiti off the walls, tell them to use chalk next time. AVALANCHE don't take it well, and there are harsh words all round; AVALANCHE are accused of being a 'sweaty old testicle of the patriarchy'; _Daughters of Gaia_ are accused of being a Shinra front. Insults fly for a week, but it's swiftly forgotten when _Wutailib_ goes silent and reports of imprisonment follow.)

So it goes. More losses: the popular blogger, 'ShinraSmellsLikeAnOldToe', goes down, only to resurface two weeks later, spouting bland aphorisms about Shinra's charity. Accounts with the telltale red 'A' are suspended from social media at breakneck speed in a coordinated strike. A prominent academic releases a report showing that mako reactors are less safe than advertised, two hours before she happens to be arrested for possession of 60,000 articles of child porn. The men who find it on her computer wear blue suits. Her institution retracts her research, deems it deeply flawed, and releases a correction showing that reactors are safer than ever.

_"How can they?!"_

But then, after a few weeks of these painful setbacks, there's a glimmer of hope. Out of the blue, a representative from the _Midgar Daily_ \-- 500,000 readers!- reaches out, through a contact of a contact of a contact, well-vetted, asking if they'd like an interview, to tell their side of the story. Barret, AVALANCHE's leader, glares at that; he's a huge man with a gun for an arm, a hot temper, and a dead family; he thinks this is More Shinra Bullshit, especially since Shinra's on the attack at the moment. But Jessie reckons all publicity is good publicity, and Biggs and Wedge, who joined around the same time as her, are optimistic. And then there's Tifa. Tifa joined long before them and, while not optimistic, seems to want to be. Tifa's another one with sad eyes,

Barret listens to Tifa. And so, with a sound between a grunt and a sigh, he okays the interview-- though not before warning them they're crazy. He says it'll just get used to track them down; Shinra will never let them get the truth out. Well, maybe not, but they promise to be careful. They'll cover their tracks, and send every last email from a disposable address, using a VPN.

It takes almost the whole weekend. They write pages upon pages: the burning of Corel, the Gongaga explosion, Junon-that-was. They pour out their hearts, detail their stories, double-triple check every stat and reference the sources. The raw material comes to over 7000 words.

"Well," says Biggs, when they finally send. "Let's see what they say to that!"

The article rolls two weeks later: "AVALANCHE's Crazy Conspiracy Theories Get Crazier!"

It's not even a good title. And the content of the article is unrecognisable, with a rambling diatribe, attributed to their leader, about aliens visiting Cactus Island and Godo being the son of a gold chocobo. But, more importantly, all the sources AVALANCHE cited have been altered or wiped from the net.

"So Shinra just wanted to know what we'd got on them..." Biggs winces. "Shit. They'll be investigating the people behind the sites... We'd better give a headsup."

"D-don't tell Barret," says Wedge.

Jessie sits there in shock. That was a serious paper. She didn't know they could _do_ that.

They log into the chat on shinrasucksballs.com, and warn the others. And just in time. An hour later, the website goes dark. The homepage redirects to a stern notice, telling them the site has been deemed Grossly Offensive and _ChattyHost_ has been served a warrant to provide the IPs of all visitors. There's an outpouring of grief and rage; they keep backups upon backups of the serious stuff, but nobody made backups of the memes, because they were memes.

_"CATGIRL SHINRA-CHAN WILL BE AVENGED!!!"_

But they take that as the cue to move headquarters, before the troops arrive. They were lucky the hosting provider warned them about the warrant; Jessie wonders if someone will be punished for it. No way to find out. The team use the walkie-talkies to warn the others to avoid sector 2 for a while, and Jessie hopes nobody was daft enough to visit the website from their home address. There's a weird amount of static on the radio. They avoid the train, where someone might search their bags at any moment, and pick their way across the city on foot instead. The gaslamps hiss, nervous.

Hours later, they reach their backup headquarters, a bar in sector 7. The top priority is, of course, to get shinrasucksballs.com back online, but by the time they've made their way over, there's bigger news coming over the airwaves: 3 women, accused of possessing chalk with the intention to write anti-Shinra slogans, arrested and executed. Jessie feels it, an arrow in her chest.

_"Those bastards!"_

All night, it continues. Another ally falls, and another. There's a bulletin every time; Shinra is sending a message. By the next morning, they've no contacts left.

They sit on the floor, numb, hearing the echoes of the firing squad as the _Shinra Radio_ presenter jabbers on about protecting people from dangerous terrorists. Now it's just the five of them. Tifa makes drinks. She looks more tired than shocked. But for Jessie, this is the first time it feels _real_. Her mind's whirling.

_"We have to do something!"_

So far, her skills have been devoted to retrieving data and making things look slick: flashy websites, the odd propaganda video...

But that's not the only thing she can do.


End file.
